Casa Matusita (Lima, Peru)

Right in the heart of Lima, Peru’s capital, at the corner of Avenida Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Avenida España, stands the two-story mansion called Casa Matusita. Unlike most ghost stories, this place supposedly drives anyone who spends a single night inside instantly, irreversibly, and completely insane.

The curse, locals say, goes all the way back to a Persian healer named Parvaneh Derwaspa who arrived during the colonial era. Her exotic looks and reclusive habits made her an outcast. At first the townspeople sought her unconventional remedies, but before long they branded her a witch who trafficked with the Devil. The Holy Inquisition arrested her, and after hideous tortures she was forced to “confess” to heresy. Condemned to burn at the stake, Parvaneh cursed the ground beneath her feet and whatever house would one day stand there, dooming every soul who entered to endless torment, tragedy, and madness.

Years later a sadistic aristocrat built a lavish residence on that very spot. He routinely beat his servants. Plotting revenge, the staff laced a dinner party’s food with a powerful hallucinogen, hoping only to scramble the guests’ wits for a while. Instead, the drug fused with Parvaneh’s dormant curse. The diners plunged into a frenzy, turned into savage beasts, and literally tore one another—and their host—limb from limb. The servants who walked in on the cannibalistic bloodbath went mad on the spot and spent the rest of their lives in an asylum.

Oddly, every supernatural incident occurs only on the second floor; the ground floor has always been a perfectly safe commercial space. Even the Catholic Church’s attempt to intervene ended in disaster. A local priest volunteered to perform an exorcism upstairs. Pelted by unseen hands and bombarded with otherworldly screams, he suffered a massive panic attack and died on the spot, his face locked in terror.

Since then the second floor has remained empty. People who work below or live nearby carry amulets—black piedra asabache stones, double-barred Caravaca crosses—to ward off the mansion’s infernal energy.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press